


One Man's Trash

by summerofspock



Series: Meet Cutes [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Halloween, M/M, Meet-Cute, Sanitation worker crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/pseuds/summerofspock
Summary: Crowley is a bin man. Aziraphale just moved into an empty house on his route.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Meet Cutes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978570
Comments: 71
Kudos: 485
Collections: Good Omens Human AUs





	One Man's Trash

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful Fyre who helped consult on UK lingo for garbage men (aka bin men apparently).

Anthony Crowley liked his job. When you got down to it, being a bin man wasn't the most romantic of careers. He wasn't going to brag about it on dates or on his monthly phone call to his mum. But he liked it. There was rhythm. A constancy.

There would always be rubbish. There would always be his route. Beez would drive the lorry and Crowley would ride the back. Hop out, hook the bin, watch it empty, unhook the bin. On it went until the route was over.

The pay was phenomenal. The quiet of the work, ideal.

People love to say you can tell a lot about someone by what they throw away, but if you asked a bin man, they'd tell you everyone's trash looks the same. You see one bin, you've seen them all.

Crowley knew this well. If you looked too close at any sort of rubbish, you saw things you didn't want to see. Best stick to the process. Hook the bin, dump the bin, unhook the bin.

It was the second Thursday in October (recycling day) when Crowley realized he was wrong. 

Beez had begged off early for an appointment but the end of their route was only three houses at the end of a lane. Easy enough for Crowley to handle without them. In fact, one of the houses had stood empty for going on a year, but this particular recycling day, rubbish was out for pickup. But it wasn't in a bin.

Crowley hopped off the back of the lorry and swore at the pile of bags. What was so hard about putting the goddamned plastics in the provided bins? Instead of hooking the bin and having it dump itself into the back, he'd have to haul all of these bags one by one.

He looked at the house nestled back in the wide garden and frowned at the vast array of orange and black decorations on the house. Perhaps an American had moved in. Regardless, definitely someone infatuated with Halloween. There were jack o' lanterns on the steps leading to the door, false cobwebs swept over the iron of the gate leading into the garden. There were even winking orange lights in the front window and a little hanging skeleton wind chime. 

He sighed and picked up the first bag. 

That's when he realized there were so many bags because the plastics were sorted by...color.

"What the fuck?" 

Crowley lifted the bag and peered through the see-through material, also noting the plastics inside might have been some of the most meticulously clean he had ever seen in his fifteen years as a bin man.

He reminded himself that there was nothing interesting about other people's rubbish and he would not be curious about this new resident and their perfect plastics.

Dropping the bag, he went back into the cab of the lorry and dug around for a scrap of paper and a pen. He'd leave whoever it was a note about needing to use a bloody city provided bin. 

After scrawling something semi-polite and mostly legible, he hopped out and went to stick it to the gate. As he wedged it between two slats, the gate swung open and a loud cackle sounded just as something black jumped out from the hedge.

Crowley was man enough to admit that he screamed as he fell on his arse.

"Oh dear, oh dear."

Crowley sat up and saw a chubby blond man bustling down the garden walk. 

His heart raced as he realized the thing that jumped out at him had been some sort of animatronic witch. 

"Bloody hell," he groaned, pushing himself to his feet. His arse was going to be bruised.

"I am so sorry," the man said, wrestling the witch off some sort of stick it was attached to. "I told my nephew we needed to wait on the witches but it's been so difficult to tell him no. Are you quite alright?"

The man turned to him and Crowley's breath caught in his chest. He had the loveliest eyes Crowley had seen in a very long time. A stormy hazel that Crowley just knew would never be the same color twice. Combined with the fluffy blond hair atop his head and the soft jumper hugging his body, he was beautiful. Not the sort of eye catching beauty that Crowley would have gone for fifteen years ago in some club trying to get his rocks off. No. The sort that made him think of a warm cup of cocoa, a cozy fire, a soft kiss goodnight.

"Yeah," Crowley said, fully aware he was staring. Could someone have a perfect nose? This man's nose was maybe perfect. "I'm alright. Startled me is all."

The man patted the witch fondly on the head before giving him an apologetic look. "She is a bit spooky I'm afraid."

"What?" Crowley scoffed. "Nah. Just..I'm usually...big spooky fan...me," he finished lamely.

The man laughed. "Well, can I help you with something?" He peered at the name patch on Crowley's uniform. "Crowley?"

"Um, yeah--yes. You need to put your rubbish in a bin."

The man frowned. "Excuse me?"

"I'm the bin man," Crowley explained, jabbing his thumb over shoulder at the still running bin lorry. "And you didn't put your rubbish in a bin. Leaving it in the bags is a real pain in the arse. Don't you have a bin? I swear everyone gets one."

The man mumbled something.

"What?" Crowley asked.

"I gave it away!" the man huffed. "My neighbor, she's expecting and some hooligans set her bins on fire and she was so upset and I thought, well, I can handle not having a bin. It's no trouble for me to carry my bags out."

Crowley gaped at him. The man smiled hopefully and wagged his finger in the direction of the bags. "I even sorted them for you. To make it easier."

Crowley sighed. "I hate to break it to you but that doesn't actually help."

The man's face fell. "Oh."

"Just go online and order another bin. It'll get dropped off and you'll be as right as rain."

"You can do that?" 

Crowley nodded and then the man was gripping his hand as if Crowley had just saved his life. "Oh, thank you. I'd hate to know I'm being a burden without putting my things in a bin properly."

The man's touch was doing things to Crowley's stomach. Butterflies. It was butterflies.

"It's not too much trouble," Crowley lied. 

The man smiled at him and it was so beautiful that Crowley was thankful an animatronic witch had made him scream and fall on his arse just so he could meet him.

"I'm Aziraphale, by the way," the man said. "I don't think I introduced myself."

"You didn't."

"It was lovely to meet you," Aziraphale added. "Again, my apologies. I'll make sure my nephew holds off on the decorations. Though I wouldn't stop by around Halloween after sundown."

Crowley very much wished to stop by literally  _ any _ day after sundown. Halloween or otherwise. He would take a thousand cackling garden witches if it meant getting to know the pretty man who sorted his recycling by color and gave away his bins to pregnant women.

Crowley finished driving his route that afternoon and spent the entire time trying to decide if Aziraphale would find it too creepy to be asked out by his bin man.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello, if youre reading this, I started a small series to allow myself to dump out all the meet cute ideas I have. I keep having ideas and 0 time to write all of them so I wanted to write the little oneshots and share them instead. I'll be writing more of these as they come up but if anything inspires anyone to write more based on an idea, please, please do. I'd love to read (or write) 15 to 30k of sanitation worker Crowley falling in love with single dad Aziraphale who is learning to be a parent to his precocious nephew Adam but all I can manage is 1.5k of Crowley getting knocked on his butt by a screaming garden witch.  
> We are all just doing our best.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


End file.
